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Connection

So, you’re taking care of your body, eating right and hitting the box. You’ve got fitness figured out – it’s sensible to use our bodies the way evolution designed them. Paleo and CrossFit are the 21st century solutions to losing the environment our ancestors spent tens of thousands of years surviving (so that we could dress up like them for Halloween).

Is it possible this suggests that man turned into a woman? Weird.

However, being physically healthy doesn’t address the whole you. We are not simply bodies – our corporeal selves are deeply affected by our emotional, mental, and spiritual lives. It is common to hear about visualization, self-talk, and affirmations in the context of athletic performance. These things work. This is evidenced over and over again in performance and recovery – you need your heart and mind on board.

But I’m not here to break records. My life is vastly improved by treating my genes to the spectacular stimulus of varied intense functional movements and avoiding foods that can’t be eaten as they are. What brings me into the box each day isn’t winning, it is the benefit to my quality of life. So, when talking about the whole self, I am not primarily concerned with athletic performance; I am talking about how the premises and ideas surrounding CrossFit can lend themselves to improving your everything.

There is how we are genetically designed to be living, and then there are the repercussions of how life actually works. I’d like us to extend the idea of addressing this disconnect from changing our physical stimulus to include attending to the wear on your spirit. Mark Sisson writes this subject, calling it the Primal Connection. To psychologically handle the dissonance between what our genes crave and what life presents can seem a heavy task, but here are a few things we can do to combat the stress of modern life that do not involve fleeing to the wilderness.

Getting some mind/body connection, warrior style.

Play – after running from lions and bagging dinner, Grok had lots of free time on his hands. Play offers a way to decompress, process, and learn, while also being generally pleasurable. Flag football, anyone?

Spend more time with nature – nature offers you a sensory experience that lets your “lizard brain” take over and gives you some downtime from thinking all those heavy thoughts, allowing you to process information through less conscious pathways. Better be on the beach Saturday!

Socialize with your tribe – find a group of people you can have deeper connections with than facebook allows – we were made to be part of a smaller community and know each other deeply for our emotional well-being. (You are all beginning to know me much better than I know you. Please comment with some intimate revelations so that we can balance the books.)

Do you have other ideas for living wildly in our civilized world? Share some, get some.

Workout of the Day 2/21/2013 – Thursday

BW = bodyweight. Scale if needed, to about 3-7 reps minimum. Alternate between bench and pull-ups as you wish.

Power.
3 Rounds:4 Depth Drop Box Jumps

Drop from a box about 12-16″. It’s a drop, not a jump down. Spend as little time on the ground as possible. Preferably staying on your toes – think double unders/pogo box jumps. See video below for an example.